Public Affairs

Weekly Statehouse Update: Hate Crimes Research, Adoption Advertising

A new study shows hate crimes laws often arent utilized. House lawmakers change a school bus safety bill. And a Senate panel advances a bill to loosen restrictions on adoption advertising. Heres what you might have missed this week at the Statehouse.url2019 legislative session2019-03-15T00:00:00-04:00

New research from Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute suggests hate crimes laws aren’t used as often as they could be. Researchers analyzed more than 300 bias-motivated homicides around the country. And hate crimes charges were filed in fewer than a third of those cases.

A Senate committee unanimously passed a bill that ensures people aren’t committing a felony when they post online that they want to adopt a child. Current law only allows licensed adoption agencies and attorneys to advertise for adoption services.

Time is running out for Indiana to enact comprehensive redistricting reform before state lawmakers are due to redraw legislative districts in 2021.

Such reform is essentially dead this session – and even modest changes are unlikely. The Senate narrowly approved a bill to create redistricting standards for lawmakers. That includes keeping communities together whenever possible and ignoring incumbent legislators’ addresses.

A controversial bill moving through the state Senate would make changes to a law that lets utilities more quickly recover the costs of certain projects from ratepayers. It involves the Transmission, Distribution, and Storage Improvement Charge or TDSIC.

TDSIC allows utilities to recover the costs of a few infrastructure projects from ratepayers every year — instead of several projects in one big rate case.

The Senate Utilities committee did not take a vote on the bill on Thursday, but plans to take up the issue again at its next meeting.

The House approved a budget proposal to boost school funding by a little more than 2 percent each year through 2021, but many who testified in the Senate’s school funding committee say current proposals are not enough for schools to increase teacher pay and still address basic needs.